2.12.2016

Will Glenn survive season six of 'The Walking Dead'?

Steven Yeun is featured on one of six variant covers of Entertainment Weekly.

Entertainment Weekly is clearly excited about the return of The Walking Dead. The hit AMC undead drama returns for the second half of season six this Sunday. To celebrate, EW has devoted six variant "special collector's covers" to the show's zombie apocalypse survivors -- including Steven Yeun as Glenn Rhee.

The magazine has done this before, although last time Glenn shared the cover with his lady love Maggie, played by Lauren Cohan (who also got her own cover this time). This set of covers is decidedly less action-y, but still depicts the survivors in a state of alert, ready for some shit to go down. Because shit's gonna go down.

Will Glenn survive the season?

The show has promised that this will be the bloodiest, most harrowing season of The Walking Dead yet, primarily because we will be introduced to villainous Negan, the most dangerous adversary our heroes have ever encountered. Dude is bad. And the outlook is not good, particularly for Glenn.

[SPOILERS] Fans of The Walking Dead comic book know that Glenn notoriously dies at the hands of Negan in issue #100. It is a vicious, merciless, horrific death. I've been dreading the show's inevitable introduction of Negan, played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, specifically because of what it could mean for Glenn's fate.

Granted, the show version of The Walking Dead has not quite followed the comic book storyline, which is ongoing, beat for beat. Plot points have diverged and converged, and certain characters that died in the comic book are still alive (for now) on the show, and vice versa. Could the show give Glenn a reprieve?

We've already seen the now-notorious Great Glenn Death Fake-Out of 2015, which I think we can all agree was traumatizing enough. But was that just a red herring to lull us into believing that the fan-favorite character, having already narrowly escaped death, is now in the clear? The Walking Dead is a cruel, cruel show.

Fingers crossed, dammit. Whatever the case, not everyone is getting out of this season unscathed. Star Andrew Lincoln, who plays Rick, says the season finale script made him sick to his stomach.

"It was the first day in the whole six years of working on The Walking Dead that I was late for work because I woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn't get back to sleep," Lincoln told Entertainment Weekly. "I was so angry and frustrated and I felt sick. And that was just after reading it."